General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Horse Thief (盗马贼)

The Horse Thief (盗马贼, also romanized Dao ma zei) is a 1986 Chinese drama film directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang (田壮壮) and produced by the Xi'an Film Studio. Set in 1923 on the Tibetan plateau, it follows a poor herder, Norbu, who turns to horse stealing to survive, is banished by his tribe, and is destroyed by illness, exile, and his own return to theft. The film is regarded as a key work of China's Fifth Generation of filmmakers and is noted for its avant-garde style, its use of Tibetan actors and the Tibetan language, and its treatment of faith, fate, and death.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / studio	Tian Zhuangzhuang; Xi'an Film Studio, completed 1986¹
Running time / format	88 minutes; color, 35 mm anamorphic widescreen, 2.35:1¹^•³
Setting	1923, Tibetan plateau; a herder driven into horse theft and robbery is expelled by his tribe¹
Principal cast	Tseshang Rinzhin (才项仁增) as Norbu; Dan Jiji (旦枝姬) as his wife Dolma⁴
Key crew	Script: Zhang Rui; cinematography: Hou Yong and Zhao Fei; art design: Huo Jianqi; music: Qu Xiaosong⁴
Recognition	Grand prize at the Swiss Third World Film Festival (Fribourg); ranked first among 1990s films in Martin Scorsese's personal list⁵^•²
Restoration	4K restoration by the China Film Archive; Mandarin version premiered at the 2018 Beijing International Film Festival, Tibetan 4K 48-frame version at Cannes Classics in 2019⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set in 1923. Norbu, a Tibetan herder, wanders the plateau and is forced by poverty to steal horses for a living. To help his sick son Zhaxi, he and accomplices rob a shipment of gifts that the government is sending to a monastery, intending to offer the stolen goods to the monastery as a votive gift for the boy. When the robbery is discovered, the tribe's chief, who refuses to hand Norbu over to the authorities, expels Norbu and his family from the tribe. Norbu, his wife Dolma, and the child drift across the grasslands. Zhaxi's condition worsens despite Norbu's devout prayers, and the boy dies. Soon after, Dolma becomes pregnant again, but hardship does not leave the family.¹^•⁸

The English-language synopsis from the film's sales agent adds the ending: Norbu sells his beloved horse to feed the newborn, sneaks into a horse pen one winter night out of longing for it, and is beaten nearly to death as a suspected thief. He returns limping to find the aunt who raised him dead, killed by a wolf, and in desperation steals horses again, ending his life while being pursued; in another account he crawls with his last strength to the sky burial ground (Tibetan site where corpses are left for vultures).³^•⁴

One Chinese academic source dates the story to 1934 rather than 1923; most festival and sales sources, including the film's own synopsis, give 1923.⁹^•⁴

Production and style

The film was shot in 1985 on the Sangke grasslands in Gannan, Tibet, with non-professional Tibetan performers speaking Tibetan.¹^•¹⁰ It was adapted by screenwriter Zhang Rui, then an editor at the magazine Feitian, from his own story "The Story of the Horse Thief," which had won the 1984 Youth Literature Award.⁸

Tian's treatment departed from the source's framing. According to a later account, his reworking of the script turned what had been a sharply critical picture of the old society into a film centered on religion, and the film leaves causal connections open, inviting viewers to supply links through association rather than plot progression.⁸ In his own director's statement, Tian described the film as being about the struggle between people and gods, life and death, fate and faith: it depicts a person's rebellion against nature and religion, his collapse in that futile rebellion, and his disappearance. He called the film his autobiography and that of his generation, and said he made it in a state of despair.¹

A Japanese review noted that although the film has the tragic storyline of a poor Tibetan horse thief, the camera keeps its attention on the Tibetan natural landscape and the distinctive life of the mountain dwellers, comparing this quality to Chen Kaige's debut Yellow Earth while observing that The Horse Thief devotes itself more purely to recording the landscape before it.¹¹

Reception and release history

The film provoked sustained controversy in Chinese film circles. In 1986 the journal Film Art organized a heated discussion of it, with critics questioning its discontinuous narrative, the non-logical relationship between religious scenes and the characters' actions, and the tension between the character's viewpoint and the director's viewpoint; Tian responded confidently.¹² The film won the grand prize at the Swiss Third World Film Festival, and the Japanese critic Tadao Sato called Tian "the most talented and outstanding Chinese film director of our time."⁵^•¹³ Martin Scorsese later placed it first among the films of the 1990s in his personal ranking.²

Release dates varied by market: Japan received the film on 21 November 1987,¹¹ and Hong Kong premiered it on 18 August 1988, where it earned HK$111,179.00.¹⁴ The Tibetan director Pema Tseden, interviewed about Tibetan-themed cinema, called it a very special film for its time, made by a Fifth Generation director when most Tibetan-themed work came from third- or fourth-generation filmmakers, but argued that despite its artistic value it did not reflect Tibetan life as Tibetans themselves observed it, being more an expression of the director's experimental intent than of lived reality.¹⁵

Restoration

The China Film Archive completed a 4K restoration from the 35 mm original camera negative, guided by Tian and cinematographer Hou Yong. The Mandarin-dubbed 4K version premiered at the 8th Beijing International Film Festival in April 2018, the archive's first independently completed 4K restoration, marking its move from 2K to 4K technology.⁶^•⁴

The Tibetan-language version had a separate history. Tian said the original Tibetan print had been lost abroad; the archive traced it through the French embassy, the Cinémathèque française, and the Japanese scholar Kariya Toshifumi, and finally recovered a Tibetan sound file from the film's French distributor. The recovered track was rebuilt into 5.1 surround sound, with dialogue, effects, ambience, and music separated onto individual tracks and processed separately.¹⁶

The Tibetan 4K restoration, converted to 48 frames per second using high-frame-rate technology, premiered in the Cannes Classics section of the 72nd Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2019, the first mainland-Chinese independently restored film selected for that section. Tian, Hou Yong, and archive representative Zuo Heng appeared on stage before an audience of more than 400.⁷^•² After the Cannes screening, several overseas distributors expressed interest, and a North American distributor whose predecessor had released the film some thirty years earlier sought to release it again.¹⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1980s › Released 1986 to 1989

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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